the highest acts of self-devotion.

NEW COURT, BEECHCROFT,
18th January.



PREFACE (1886)



Perhaps this book is an instance to be adduced in support of the
advice I have often given to young authors--not to print before they
themselves are old enough to do justice to their freshest ideas.

Not that I can lay claim to its being a production of tender and
interesting youth. It was my second actual publication, and I
believe I was of age before it appeared--but I see now the failures
that more experience might have enabled me to avoid; and I would not
again have given it to the world if the same characters recurring in
another story had not excited a certain desire to see their first
start.

In fact they have been more or less my life-long companions. An
almost solitary child, with periodical visits to the Elysium of a
large family, it was natural to dream of other children and their
ways and sports till they became almost realities. They took shape
when my French master set me to write letters for him. The letters
gradually became conversation and narrative, and the adventures of
the family sweetened the toils of French composition. In the